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Navigating Israel’s Nuclear ‘Samson Option’
In any rationality-based strategic calculus, the “Samson Option” — which refers to an Israeli nuclear strike — would refer not to a last-resort act of national vengeance, but to a persuasive limit on existential threats.
When taken together with Israel’s intentionally ambiguous nuclear strategy, an outdated doctrine commonly referred to as “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” or “Israel’s bomb in the basement” (amimut in Hebrew), more compelling threat postures could prove effective. To be truly promising, however, an Israeli Samson Option would need to 1) coincide with an incremental and selective end to “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” and 2) pertain to Iran directly, not just to terrorist proxies.
There are no conceivable circumstances in which Samson could offer Israel useful applications regarding Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, or any other jihadist foes.
Israeli strategists will need to consider factors beyond what is taking place right now between Israel and its jihadist adversaries. Since military crises in other parts of the world could spill over into the Middle East, strategic planners should begin to clarify Israel’s operational preparations regarding Samson. This is especially the case where a spill-over could involve the threat or actual use of nuclear weapons.
Though Iran is still “only” pre-nuclear, it already has the capacity to use radiation dispersal weapons and/or launch conventional rockets at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. Moreover, Tehran has close ties to Pyongyang, and it is not inconceivable that a nuclear North Korea might operate as a strategic stand-in for a not-yet-nuclear Iran.
For disciplined Israeli strategists, geopolitical context matters. There can be no logic-based assessment of probabilities because the events under consideration would be unprecedented. In logic and mathematics, true probabilities can never be ascertained out of nothing. They can be drawn only from the determinable frequency of pertinent past events.
These are not narrowly political or intuitive calculations. As an operationally meaningful concept, the Samson Option references a residual deterrence doctrine founded upon credible threats (whether implicit or explicit) of overwhelming nuclear retaliation or counter-retaliation. These are unconventional threats to thwart more-or-less expected enemy state aggressions. Reasonably, any such massive last-resort doctrine could enter into force only where enemy aggressions would imperil Israel’s continued existence as a viable nation-state. In the absence of expected aggressions from Iran, Israel would more prudently rely upon an “escalation ladder.”
For doctrinal clarity, Israel’s nuclear forces should always remain oriented to deterrence ex ante, never to revenge ex post. It would do Israel little good to proffer Samson-level threats in response to “ordinary” or less than massive forms of enemy attack. Even where the principal operational object for Israel would be counter-terrorist success against Hamas, Hezbollah, etc., invoking Samson could make sense only vis-à-vis Hamas state patron Iran or Iran’s nuclear patron North Korea. In such nuanced calculations, assumptions of rationality could prove problematic.
For Israel’s nuclear deterrent to work against a still non-nuclear Iran, it is virtually inconceivable that it would need to include a Samson Option. In any crisis between Israel and Iran involving jihadist terror, Israel could almost certainly achieve “escalation dominance” without employing Samson. But if Iran were already an authentic nuclear adversary, its capacity to enhance surrogate terror capabilities would exceed any pre-nuclear constraints of competitive risk-taking. In these circumstances, Samson could prove necessary.
Israel’s basis for launching a preemptive strike against Iran without Samson could be rational only before that state turned verifiably nuclear. A foreseeable non-Samson plan for preemption would involve more direct Iranian involvement in the continuing terror war against Israel on behalf of Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. By setting back Iranian nuclear efforts and infrastructures, such pre-Samson involvement could offer Israel an asymmetrical power advantage in the region. This larger opportunity would be the result of Israel’s not yet having to fear a nuclear war against Iran.
There would be related matters of intra-crisis communications. As an element of any ongoing strategic dialogue, the basic message of an Israeli Samson Option would need to remain uniform and consistent. It should signal to an adversary state the unstated promise of a counter-city (“counter value”) nuclear reprisal. Israel would also need to avoid signaling to its Iranian adversary any sequential gradations of nuclear warfighting.
Israel’s “bottom line” reasoning would likely be as follows: For Israel, exercising a Samson Option threat is not apt to deter any Iranian aggressions short of nuclear and/or massively large-scale conventional (including biological) first strikes. Therefore, Samson can do little to prevent Iran from its enthusiastic support of anti-Israel jihadists.
Whatever the Samson Option’s precise goals, its key objective should remain constant and conspicuous. This objective is to keep Israel “alive,” not (as presented in Biblical imagery) to stop the Jewish State from “dying alone.” In this peremptory objective, Israeli policy should deviate from the Biblical Samson narrative.
Ultimately, Samson, in all relevant military nuclear matters, should be about how best to manage urgent processes of strategic dissuasion. At least for now, Israel’s presumed nuclear strategy, though not yet clearly articulated, is oriented toward nuclear war avoidance and not to nuclear war fighting. From all standpoints, this represents Israel’s only correct orientation.
The Samson Option could never protect Israel as a comprehensive nuclear strategy by itself. This option should never be confused with Israel’s more generalized or “broad spectrum” nuclear strategy, one that would seek to maximize deterrence at incrementally less apocalyptic levels of military engagement.
At this point, various questions will need to be raised. Above all: How can the Samson Option best serve Israel’s general strategic requirements? Though the primary mission of Israel’s nuclear weapons should be to preserve the Jewish State — not to wreak havoc upon foes when all else has seemingly been lost — obvious preparations for a Samson Option could still improve Israel’s nuclear deterrence and preemption capabilities.
As soon as possible, even during the current Gaza war with Hamas, Jerusalem will need to shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.” Among other things, this explicit shift would allow Israel to clarify that its nuclear weapons are not too large for actual operational use against Iran. In essence, this complex clarification would be the reciprocal of Israel’s Samson Option and would cover the complete spectrum of Israel’s nuclear deterrence options.
There will be corresponding legal issues. Israeli resorts to conventional and defensive first strikes could prove permissible or law-enforcing under authoritative international law. In such cases, Israeli preemptions would contain a jurisprudential counterpart to nuclear weapons use. This counterpart should be referenced formally as “anticipatory self-defense.”
Concerning long-term Israeli nuclear deterrence, recognizable preparations for a Samson Option could help convince Iran or other designated enemy states that massive aggressions against Israel would never be gainful. This could prove most compelling if Israel’s “Samson weapons” were 1) coupled with some explicit level of nuclear disclosure (thereby effectively ending Israel’s longstanding posture of nuclear ambiguity); 2) recognizably invulnerable to enemy first strikes; and 3) “counter-city”/”counter-value” in declared mission function. Additionally, in view of what nuclear strategists sometimes refer to as the “rationality of pretended irrationality,” Samson could enhance Israeli nuclear deterrence by demonstrating a more evident Israeli willingness to take existential risks.
On occasion, the nuclear deterrence benefits of “pretended irrationality” could depend on prior Iranian awareness of Israel’s counter-city or counter-value targeting posture. Such a posture was recommended some 20 years ago by the Project Daniel Group in its confidential report to then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. Residually, however, to best ensure that Israel could still engage in nuclear warfighting if its counter-value nuclear deterrence were to fail, Israel would more openly adopt a “mixed” counter-value/counter-force nuclear targeting doctrine.
In reference to strategies of preemption, Israeli preparations for a Samson Option — explicit, recognizable and not just sotto voce — could help convince Israel’s leadership that defensive first strikes could sometimes be gainful.
In all cases involving Samson and Israeli nuclear deterrence, visible last-resort nuclear preparations could enhance Israel’s preemption options by underscoring a bold national willingness to take existential risks. However, displaying such risks could become a double-edged sword. The fact that these are uncharted waters and there exist no precedents from which to extrapolate science-based probabilities means Israel would need to move with determination and caution.
What about “pretended irrationality?” That complex calculus could become a related part of Samson. Israel’s leaders will need to remain mindful of this integration. Brandished too “irrationally,” Israeli preparations for a Samson Option, though unwitting, could encourage Iranian preemptions. This peril would be underscored by pressures on both Israel and Iran to achieve intra-crisis “escalation dominance.” Also significant in this unpredictable environment of competitive risk-taking would be either or both sides’ deployment of expanding missile defenses.
This hearkens back to the early days of Cold War nuclear deterrence between the United States and the Soviet Union, days of “mutually assured destruction” or MAD. Either Israeli or Iranian efforts to reduce nuclear retaliatory force vulnerabilities could incentivize the other to more hurriedly strike first; that is, to “preempt the preemption.” In reference to international law, close attention would then need to be directed toward the peremptory rules of “military necessity.”
If left to itself, neither deterred nor preempted, Iran could threaten to bring the Jewish State face-to-face with Dante’s Inferno. Such a portentous scenario has been made more credible by the recent strategic strengthening of Iran by its tighter alignment with North Korea and its surrogate fighters in Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. At some not-too-distant point, a coordinated Iran-Hezbollah offensive (complementing the Iran-Hamas offensive in Gaza) could signal more imminent existential perils for Israel. By definition, all such synergistic intersections would be taking place within the broadly uncertain context of “Cold War II.”
In extremis atomicum, these hazards could become so unique and formidable that employing a Samson Option would represent the only available strategic option for Israel. In the best of all possible worlds, Israel would have no need to augment or even maintain its arsenal of deterrent threat options – especially untested nuclear components – but this ideal reconfiguration of world politics remains a long way off. In that ideal world, Israel could anticipate the replacement of realpolitik (power politics) with Westphalian international politics. Such a replacement would be based on the awareness that planet Earth is an inter-dependent and organic whole.
Plainly, the time for such replacement has not yet arrived. It follows that Jerusalem will need to prepare visibly for a possible Samson Option. The point of this doctrinal imperative would not be to give preference to any actual applications of Samson, but to best ensure that Israel could deter all survival-threatening enemy aggressions.
For the moment, Israel remains in protracted war with Hamas. It can succeed in this conflict only by weakening jihadist state-sponsor Iran. In the best-case scenario, Iran would remain non-nuclear and Israeli management of Iranian terror support would remain within the bounds of conventional deterrence. If, however, Iran were permitted to cross the nuclear weapons threshold by acquiring chain-reaction nuclear weapons (not just radiation dispersal weapons), Israel’s subsequent efforts at deterrence of Iran would become vastly more problematic. At that point, ipso facto, Israel could require a Samson Option to maintain its “escalation dominance.”
There does exist an intermediate, if paradoxical, scenario for Israel. If Iran should become involved in any direct military action against Israel before becoming a fully nuclear adversary, the Jewish State could find itself with a strategic and law-enforcing opportunity to preemptively destroy Iranian nuclear infrastructures before they become operational. Though advancing such a scenario could also create the false impression of planned Israeli aggression, it would more correctly represent permissible self-defense. Most importantly, of course, such an Israeli preemption could prevent a full-scale nuclear war with Iran.
How should Israel navigate chaos? Whether in the Old Testament or in more-or-less synchronous Greek and Roman thought, chaos can be understood as something potentially positive: an intellectual tabula rasa which, if thoughtfully “filled in,” can prepare the world for all possibilities, both sacred and profane. In essence, chaos can represent an inchoate place from which an expanding civilizational opportunity can still originate.
Such thinking is unorthodox, to be sure, but for Israel it could prove manifestly useful. With such thinking, chaos is never just a “predator” that swallows everything whole: omnivorous, callous, indiscriminate, and without higher purpose. Here, chaos is considered instead as an auspicious “openness,” a protean realm from within which new kinds of opportunity can be revealed.
This means the chaos in the Middle East need not necessarily be interpreted by Israel’s senior military planners as a harbinger of further regional violence and instability. In some hard-to-conceptualize respects, at least, such chaos could represent a condition for national security and survival. Though there are still rough seas ahead, their waves could be harnessed for a purposeful strategic direction.
Louis René Beres, Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue, is the author of many books and articles dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war, including Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1980) and Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (D.C. Heath/Lexington, 1986). His twelfth book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy, was published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2016. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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‘The Jewish Spirit’: Holocaust Survivors, Freed Israeli Hostages Gather at Auschwitz for ‘March of the Living’
Holocaust survivors, relatives of Israeli hostages, and survivors of Hamas captivity marched together at Auschwitz for the annual March of the Living on April 24, 2025. Photo: Chen Schimmel
Oswiecim, Poland — Holocaust survivors, relatives of Israeli hostages, and survivors of Hamas captivity marched together at Auschwitz, the infamous former Nazi concentration camp in Poland, for the first time on Thursday, joining Israeli President Isaac Herzog in the annual March of the Living.
The march from Auschwitz I to Auschwitz II-Birkenau — the Nazis’ largest death camp where 1 million Jews were murdered during World War II — took place on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day and included 80 Holocaust survivors, many of whom were also death march survivors, to mark 80 years since the liberation of the camps.
March of the Living president Phyllis Greenberg Heideman addressed the survivors, who were seated next to the gate bearing the notorious inscription, “Work sets you free.”
“It’s a strange thing to say, but we welcome you to Auschwitz,” she said. “You are the true heroes. We will treasure your legacy forever.”
Almog Meir Jan and his mother Orit. Almog was rescued by the IDF on June 5 during the Arnon Mission. Photo: Chen Schimmel
Standing outside the crematoria and gas chambers at Auschwitz I, recently released hostage Eli Sharabi said, “The Holocaust was unlike anything else — we will never forget and never forgive.”
“But our presence here is the triumph of the Jewish spirit. The Jewish people sanctify life, not death. I endured horrors in enemy captivity, but I chose life. That gives me hope to get up each morning and begin rebuilding,” he added.
Sharabi, whose wife and daughters were murdered during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, was released in February after nearly 500 days in captivity. His emaciated appearance as he was paraded through Gaza on his release led to comparisons with concentration camp survivors.
Pro-Israel influencer Shiraz Shukran broke down after seeing Sharabi. The two embraced for several minutes. “Seeing him in real life, in this place, just made it all suddenly seem very close. This is no longer something that happened 80 years ago; it’s continuing until this day,” Shukran told The Algemeiner.
Pro-Israel influencer Shiraz Shukran embracing former hostage Eli Sharabi. Photo: Debbie Weiss / The Algemeiner
In remarks to reporters prior to the march, Herzog called the return of the hostages a “universal human imperative.”
“With a broken heart, I remind us all that although after the Holocaust we vowed, ‘Never again,’ today, even as we stand here, the souls of dozens of Jews again ‘yearn within a cage,’ ‘thirsting for water and for freedom,’ as 59 of our brothers and sisters are held by terrorist murderers in Gaza, in a horrific crime against humanity,” Herzog said, referring to the hostages kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion who remain in captivity.
His Polish counterpart, President Andrzej Duda, said the march was “a dramatic call of ‘never again.’ No more hatred, no more discrimination, no more antisemitism.”
He called for “all wars in the Middle East to end,” and for a two-state solution, which he said was the “most rational solution [to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] that gives hope for achieving stable and lasting peace.”
The two leaders signed the visitors’ book and laid a wreath at Auschwitz’s Black Wall, where the Nazis executed prisoners.
At the march’s opening ceremony, the head of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Matt Brooks, lit one of six candles — representing the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis — and addressed rising antisemitism in the world.
“Jews all over the world fear walking streets with a kippah and it’s unacceptable. College students are being attacked verbally and physically,” he told The Algemeiner.
He praised US President Donald Trump for “combating this scourge.”
“There’s a new sheriff in town. It’s my hope the rest of the world can look to him to see how to support and defend the Jewish community against these vile attacks,” he said.
Matt Brooks, chief executive officer of the Republican Jewish Coalition, with Malcolm Hoenlein, vice chairman emeritus of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Photo: Debbie Weiss / The Algemeiner
In Block 5, where thousands of victims’ eyeglasses are displayed behind glass, Laly Dery told a delegation of Israeli teenagers from the national civil service about her son, Sgt. First Class (res.) Saadia, who fell in battle in Gaza in June.
“Just like my son, who served the country with every fiber of his being, you have earned the enormous privilege of serving the state of Israel,” Dery said.
Derai’s words resonated with Sara Bisan, the only member of the national service delegation not wearing an Israeli flag. Instead, Bisan wore the distinctive multi-colored flag of the Druze community to which she belongs.
“I feel her pain, and it hurts,” Bisan said, reflecting on the death of her own friend from the northern Druze village of Kfar Yarka, who was also killed in Gaza.
“But our people, the Druze and the Jews, share a lot, including a love of Israel. I also feel that serving the state of Israel is a privilege,” she added.
Sara Bisan. Photo: Debbie Weiss / The Algemeiner
Twelve thousand participants marched the 1.7 miles from Auschwitz to Birkenau for the main ceremony, which was cut short this year due to heavy rain.
As thunder echoed overhead, released hostage Agam Berger played the theme from “Schindler’s List” on a 150-year-old violin rescued during the Holocaust. Daniel Weiss, a survivor from Kibbutz Be’eri whose father was murdered on Oct. 7 and whose mother was abducted and later killed in Gaza, performed a musical rendition of the psalm Shir Lamaalot alongside her.
“The Lord will guard you from all evil; He will guard your soul,” Weiss sang, his voice quavering.
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French Far-Left Party Calls for Ban on Israeli Pop Star Eyal Golan’s Paris Concert
Eyal Golan. Photo: Screenshot
France’s leading far-left party has called for the cancellation of Israeli pop star Eyal Golan’s upcoming concert in Paris, describing him as “a true mouthpiece for supporters of genocide” in Gaza.
In a statement released on Wednesday, the La France Insoumise party (LFI — “France Unbowed”), led by leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, urged the National Assembly — the lower house of the French Parliament — to ban Golan’s upcoming concert, claiming that he “should not come to sing the praises of genocide in Paris.”
“We call for a broad mobilization to prevent this event from taking place,” LFI lawmakers wrote in the statement, referring to Golan’s concert scheduled for May 20. “We ask the prefect to ban it immediately.”
“No one should come to Paris to sing hymns to the genocide of the Palestinian people,” the statement continued.
According to the party, the 54-year-old singer called for “the extermination of the Palestinian people” in a social media post the day after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which he wrote, “Leave no soul alive.”
LFI also said that Golan “repeated the statement a week later, before receiving support from far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir,” who serves as Israel’s national security minister.
In their statement, LFI lawmakers claimed that Golan’s concert, expected to gather more than 4,500 people, “constitutes a real voice for genocide supporters.”
“France cannot tolerate such an unnecessary insult to the thousands of Gaza victims and their loved ones,” the statement read.
In response to these accusations, Liam Productions, the event organizer, denounced the push to cancel Golan’s concert as antisemitic and expressed their eagerness to meet the Jewish community in France, promising a “unifying and special evening.”
“On Holocaust Remembrance Day, as we remember the consequences of staying silent in the face of hate, far-left parties in France seek to boycott an Israeli artist simply because he is Israeli,” the statement read.
“This is not freedom of expression — it is antisemitism disguised as morality. The people of Israel will not be silent, will not apologize, and will not stop singing.”
Mélenchon and his party have a long history of pushing anti-Israel policies and, according to Jewish leaders, of making antisemitic comments — such as suggesting that Jews killed Jesus, echoing a false claim that was used to justify antisemitic violence and discrimination throughout the Middle Ages in Europe.
The French diplomat has been criticized by French Jews as a threat to their community, as well as to those who support Israel.
Mélenchon has previously described the French Jewish community as “an arrogant minority that lectures to the rest.” He has also urged the French government to recognize a “Palestinian state.”
In the wake of the Hamas onslaught on Israel, Mélenchon and his party issued a statement calling the attacks “an armed offensive by Palestinian forces” in response to the ongoing Israeli “occupation.”
Last year, Mélenchon openly expressed support for Hezbollah on social media, as the Iran-backed terrorist organization based in Lebanon continued to clash with Israel.
“Mass killing in Lebanon by Netanyahu’s invading army,” Melenchon wrote in a post on X, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The toll is getting worse by the hour. Full support for the national resistance of the Lebanese.”
France has experienced a disturbing surge in antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7 atrocities, with 1,570 anti-Jewish hate crimes recorded last year.
The total number of antisemitic outrages last year was a slight dip from 2023’s record total of 1,676, but it marked a striking increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022, according to a report by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) — the main representative body of French Jews.
“LFI has given antisemitism a political endorsement,” CRIF president Yonathan Arfi told the French publication Le Point last year. “We observe this toxic porosity between criticism of Israel and the ostracization of French Jews. The Palestinian cause becomes a license to hate.”
In late May and early June, antisemitic acts rose by more than 140 percent in France, far surpassing the weekly average of slightly more than 30 incidents.
The report also found that 65.2 percent of antisemitic acts last year targeted individuals, with more than 10 percent of these offenses involving physical violence.
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Trump Signs Seismic Executive Order on Foreign Funding in Higher Education
US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon shakes hands with Annette Albright next to US President Donald Trump during an event to sign executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 23, 2025. Photo: Leah Millis via Reuters Connect.
US President Donald Trump has signed a seismic executive order to strengthen federal law which colleges and universities have long circumvented to avoid reporting donations they receive from illiberal foreign governments and individuals.
“Protecting American educational, cultural, and national security interests requires transparency regarding foreign funds flowing to American higher education and research institutions,” Trump said in the order, which was signed in the Oval Office in the presence of the Secretary of Education Linda McMahon on Wednesday. “It is the policy of my administration to end the secrecy surrounding foreign funds in American educational institutions, protect the marketplace of ideas from propaganda sponsored by foreign governments, and safeguard America’s students and research from foreign exploitation.”
The executive order noted that during Trump’s first term in office, the Education Department launched investigations of 19 higher education institutions suspected of concealing foreign donations and any undue influence the immense sums may have gained the country from which they originated — inquiries that led to the disclosure of $6.5 billion worth of unreported gifts. The Biden administration, he said, “undid” that work, “hindering public access to information on foreign gifts and contracts.”
The remainder of the order enumerates enforcement duties delegated to McMahon, which include reversing Biden-era policies which countenanced lax observance of the law — Section 117 of the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965 — updating the public on the department’s findings, and impounding federal funds appropriated to institutions that continue to shroud their foreign donations behind a veil of secrecy and corporate spin.
“Unfortunately, in the last four years, the Biden administration undermined the structures the president built to do this critical work, allowing nations like China and Qatar to funnel billions of dollars to US universities with little to no oversight,” McMahon said in a statement. “This financial infiltration enabled foreign governments to steal taxpayer-funded intellectual property and reshape how our elite campuses teach about Israel and the Middle East.”
Foreign money in higher education is an issue to which scholars and nonprofit groups have called attention for years, arguing that it is an instrument of hostile powers that aim to distort US foreign policy by exposing students to propaganda or other ideas which undermine faith in liberal values such as free markets, limited government, and freedom of the press. Some of it is used to rehabilitate the reputations of authoritarian governments, a tactic which, experts argue, effectively converts the openness of American society into a force of its own self-subversion.
For example, according to the 2017 National Association of Scholars (NAS) report “Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and Soft Power in American Higher Education,” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for years planted “Confucius Institutes” at universities across the US, teaching students that Taiwan is Chinese territory while censoring darker moments in the regime’s history, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre that killed thousands of Chinese citizens. The institutes, the report added, came with substantial financial benefits, such as extra funds for the University at Buffalo’s Asian studies department and “opera costumes and materials in the lobby of Binghamton University.”
At other times, the Confucius Institutes were allegedly used as bases from which to conduct espionage and theft of American research and intellectual property.
NAS president Peter Wood told The Algemeiner on Thursday that Trump’s executive order is the right move, but that higher education will “resist” complying with it.
“What is at stake here is not just compliance with a good accounting principle. What is really at stake is the contempt with which many college and university presidents regard America’s national interest,” Wood said. “Allowing our universities to become beholden to the Chinese Community Party endangers Americans. The National Association of Scholars has helped to track the theft of intellectual property, the duplicity of American researchers, and the diversion research programs all under the influence of Chinese funding. China is far from the only source of such subversive funding, but it is by far the largest source.”
He added, “President Trump’s forceful executive order will go a long way towards curing this problem. We can be under no illusion, however, that America’s colleges and universities will cheerfully comply. They have a long record of ignoring lawful requirements for such disclosure and they are now more eager than ever to demonstrate their defiance of America’s laws. In light of other executive orders against [diversity, equity, and inclusion] and other forms of academic malfeasance, dozens of prominent research universities are openly declaring that they intend to resist.”
NAS has recorded copious data on foreign funding of higher education, notably in the Foreign Donor Database it created in 2024 that led to the uncovering of vast sums the Qatari government had pumped into American universities — Cornell University received over $322 million, for example, from the Qatar National Research Fund between 2015 and 2018 — to promote pro-Hamas propaganda.
Alex Joffe, anthropologist and editor of BDS Monitor for Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), told The Algemeiner that Qatar has “given billions to universities, including to share their Middle East studies program which then in turn develop and disseminate K-12 curriculums which are dramatically anti-Israel, antisemitic, and pro-Islamist.”
The donation of billions of unreported dollars to US institutions of higher education is strongly correlated with an erosion of liberal democratic norms and increased antisemitism on college campuses, according to a 2023 report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) titled, “The Corruption of the American Mind.”
From 2015-2020, the report noted, schools that accepted money from Middle Eastern donors had, on average, 300 percent more antisemitic incidents than schools that did not accept such donations. The largest donor it named is Qatar, which former US President Joe Biden described in 2022 as a “major non-NATO ally.” From 2014-2019, Qatar gave American universities a striking $2.7 billion in undocumented funds.
Additionally, students attending universities that received foreign funding witnessed antisemitism “significantly more often” than those attending schools that did not.
“A lack of transparency in funding reporting occurred in tandem with antidemocratic norms and antisemitism across American institutions of higher education,” the report said. “A massive influx of foreign, concealed donations to American institutions of higher learning, much of it from authoritarian regimes with notable support from Middle Eastern sources, reflects or supports heightened levels of intolerance towards Jews, open inquiry, and free expression.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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